“The people of my country won’t hurt you,” I said. “Foreigners from every nation have come to America to make a new home. Even your Communist belief system, while not welcome here, is not illegal.”
She let out a long breath. Resignation was one way to read it.
I suggested she would feel happier if she told me her Chinese name. She did, but then I couldn’t repeat it to her satisfaction. My mouth wouldn’t form those sounds.
“Better if you keep call me Betty,” she said. “The other name is finish.”
“Okay, Betty. Look here. We have made some solid progress just now. Let me point something out to you.” I bit into the plum she’d wiped for me. “We have both caught each other out now, Betty. Do you see what I mean?”
“No.”
“I told you a tall tale, and you told me a tall tale. Then each of us caught the other out. That means you’ve got my number, and I’ve got yours. Do you see? We’re involved. We may as well trust each other. But sometimes, Betty, it is hard for me to guess what you are thinking.”
“What I am thinking is pretty simple,” she said. “Can easily guess.”
“Are you hating America? Are you hating me?”
“No! You say you are try to help me!”
That took me back, because I did not remember saying it. But of course I had said it—only I hadn’t expected her to believe me. Perhaps she was worse off than I had guessed. Putting it in the agent recruitment terms I had learned from Ray, the problem in Betty’s case wasn’t finding a vulnerability but choosing one.
“I will help you if you will trust me,” I said.
“Have no choice but trust you,” she said.
38
“I have a friend who may be able to get you papers,” I said. “But you must promise to say nothing about my father.”
I never had given Betty a viable cover story to replace the stinker about the boarding school. She was a lot of work to lie to. Most people will meet you halfway for a lie, helping you out with an “I see what you mean,” “That has happened to me, too,” or the like. But Betty, when she wasn’t angry or crying, mostly wore a Mount Rushmore–type expression.
We drove to West Virginia. The trip took us past Harpers Ferry, and I debated whether to point it out. What thoughts would it give rise to inside the skull of a Maoist? I wound up telling her a two-minute version of John Brown’s raid on the Federal arsenal. She took it in. “America is very racist,” she opined.
Here is the other small highlight of the trip. I said, “Keep your eye out for a yellow post,” for that was the marker for the private road onto which we would turn. Minutes went by, and I said aloud, “Where is that yellow post?”
“Way back,” Betty said.
She had watched for it and seen it, but she hadn’t bothered to mention it.
I turned the Scamp around. I said, “You are strange to me, Betty. I don’t understand you a bit. You claim to come from China, but I wonder if you are from space.”
We drove a tenth of a mile through the woods. The driveway had a quiltlike topping of loose, clean gravel on it. Otherwise, the place had not changed much in the couple of years since I had spent a Christmas break here. The house was long and low, with a lot of roof, and in the yard there were corncobs on poles for the squirrels. Out back was a steel barn with a paddock beside it.
The moment of making the introductions would be crucial. I needed to set the terms, and the only way to do that is by speaking first, face-on, with your hands out of your pockets and ready to snatch the advantage. This is called “dominating the situation.”
I thought I had caught a break when I saw Betty’s head tip forward. The music of the gravel under our tires had lulled her to sleep, I supposed. I ran and punched the doorbell, and Alex Gandy opened the door.
The sight of Ray’s best friend’s head could be startling, even when you knew what to expect. His head was like a short log, bulky and rough down the sides. His coarse silver hair had been allowed to grow bushy since retirement, and the woolly sideburns were also new. He wore jeans, brown socks, and a clean, unpressed cotton shirt.
“Sorry not to have called. Ray’s out of pocket, and I’ve got a Chinese Maoist asleep in the car.”
There was a kind of frown that Alex Gandy often used, a vague, downturned smile with a friendly wonderment behind it. He seemed to ask himself, What small thing has gone wrong that I can fix?
I saw his eyes fasten on to something just past my shoulder. I twisted. There was Betty, at my side. The little Asian Boris Karloff had followed right behind me.
“There you are, Betty. Betty, this is my friend Mr. Howell. Mr. Howell, I was just now telling Betty that you have often told me, ‘Roberta, drop in whenever you’re in West Virginia.’ So here we are, Roberta and Betty, dropping in on Mr. Howell.” I was winking my right eye, not my good eye for winking, but I had Betty on the left.
Mr. Gandy took in a long breath. “Betty, I’m so glad to meet you,” he said. “I was on my way to the barn to see Mrs. Howell. Shall we walk out together?”
A large gray poodle pressed its nose against Betty. Betty had not been moving noticeably, and yet she became somehow even more motionless now, with the poodle’s nose upon her. Mr. Gandy, seeing the problem, sent the dog inside.
The barn boots were kept on the porch in a row. Mr. Gandy turned one upside down and gave it a knock.
“Once I found a black widow spider in my boot,” he said, smiling.
Betty looked like a cat on a leash: feet apart, back curled, waiting to have her neck pulled.
39
Mr. Gandy entered the barn alone. I wonder what was said in there. Minutes passed before he appeared again, following Mrs. Gandy, who came at me with both arms out, but only to grab my hands and squeeze them once. “I’m so glad you’ve come!” she said. She was a tall woman with a lean, strong figure and a queenly manner. Her hair was colored blond to mask the gray. She pivoted silently to Betty, ready to be introduced. That was her way of dominating the situation.
In no time she had Betty in the saddle on a sleepy black mare with a drooping lower lip. The mare was called Babe. I had ridden her myself. Betty sat very straight and solemn upon Babe with the skirt of my patchwork print dress bunched up around her thighs and the reins in both hands as Mrs. Gandy led the horse in a circle. Mr. Gandy and I stood under a walnut tree. I stepped on a wet walnut husk, and some of the black liquid got on my shoe.
“Where is Ray?” Mr. Gandy said.
“Before we get to that, please listen. That Chinese is a Communist from the mainland! She’s an illegal but might be of use.”
“Of use to whom?”
“To our government. She claims to have party connections inside Red China.” I told him Betty’s story about the ping-pongers and her party official boyfriend.
“Is this a joke? Are you listening, Ray?” He seemed to peer into my hair.
“No, no. This is real. I’m convinced she is a straight-up-and-down Maoist. I get that feeling because of a number of things which it’s difficult to put my finger on. She’s not like you and me. Spend a few minutes with her. Three months ago she was riding her bicycle around Peking, munching fried crickets.”
“Where in the heck did you get her?”
“We met her in a restaurant.”
“Where is Ray?”
I told Mr. Gandy that I would very much like to tell him that information, but first he would have to agree to keep it in the strictest confidence, including from Agency friends.
“I can’t agree to keep that kind of confidence.”
“This is coming straight from Ray, Mr. Gandy. Ray made me promise. I can’t tell you anything except on the condition you keep it secret.”
“All right. Agreed.”
“Ray’s in love,” I said.
“What?”
“He has fallen in love with a widow named Edel. They’re traveling in New Mexico, with my blessing.”
“He left you alone to go on a trip
with his girlfriend?”
“That’s right. She’s been giving me piano lessons.”
“What are you, Angela, fourteen?”
“Sixteen,” I lied. “I just received my driver’s license.”
Checks of light moved on his loglike head as the walnut leaves above us were jostled by air. “Why did you bring that Chinese girl here?”
“It was Ray’s idea.”
“What am I supposed to do with her?”
“Contact the Agency. Get her to a safe house. She’s got no passport—that’s her first vulnerability. She won’t trust any Chinese, because she’s on the run from this fellow Wang who imported her. She will make a useful asset for our side.”
“She might make a useful asset if she were in China,” Mr. Gandy said. “Where can I call Ray?”
“Mm. They’re in the desert. Camping under the stars.”
“What is the woman’s name? Odle?”
“Edel.”
“First name?”
“Gloria. Not to press the point, but did you happen to mention to Mrs. Gandy that I am going by the name of Roberta with this Chinese?”
“I mentioned it,” he said. He sniffed. “Don’t worry about Marie. She seldom forgets an alias.”
40
From the barn came a hard knocking, accompanied by an awful nonhuman squeal. Mrs. Gandy ran for the barn while Mr. Gandy held the black mare’s head. I ran after Mrs. Gandy. The skinny red gelding was in there alone, weaving his head over the stall door and blowing air.
“Red wants part of the action,” Mrs. Gandy said.
“I will ride him,” I said.
“No, you won’t.” She got him out of the stall and put him in cross-ties in the barn aisle. She showed me the spray of crescent-shaped dents where he’d kicked the back of his stall. “He’s too nervous and flaky for an inexperienced rider.”
“I remember that about him,” I said. I at least wanted credit for having paid attention.
When she had the horse secured she turned to me. “Where is Ray and why are you here without him?”
I went through my love-in-the-desert story again.
She received it more or less like a dirty handkerchief. The question was not whether to use it, but how to dispose of it.
“I’m going to let Alex deal with that,” she said. “For now, you are here, and this horse needs brushing.”
I guess he had rolled in some mud, because I raised a good cloud of dust using the brush on his back. I loved that work. When I had finished, Mrs. Gandy showed me how to clean his feet.
It’s a curious thing, holding a horse’s foot. The foot hangs heavy and loose from its backward ankle. I worked the pick through the hollow alongside the part that is called the frog, releasing some clay and a small gray stone. I set the foot down, and the horse shifted several hundred pounds of weight onto it. He sighed.
“Some care is all he wanted,” Mrs. Gandy said.
It was hard for me to imagine not being content inside that barn. The dusty, shady orderliness and the sweet smell of hay appealed to me. There was a black and white cat in the hayloft, sitting up straight with his eyes closed. Everything and everyone had a place.
When we let Red out, Betty was where we had left her, astride the droopy-lipped mare. Babe’s lips had gray fuzz on them and a few long hairs like whiskers. I put my hand on her mouth. The soft lips groped at my fingers.
Betty was unhappy. “Want to get down.”
“Come on down, then,” I said.
Betty swung her right leg over the animal’s head. Now she was sitting sideways on the horse, as though it were a park bench. Her face wore an empty look as she slid down from the saddle, landing square on both her Chinese slippers.
“That’s one way to do it,” Mr. Gandy said.
“I’ll get on now,” I said.
Mr. Gandy laced his fingers and launched me up, and Babe and I followed Mrs. Gandy and Red down a soft track at the edge of the woods. We gave Betty and Mr. Gandy some time in which to puzzle each other out. For a while, I forgot my Betty-related cares.
The world does look altogether more manageable from the back of a horse. Babe had an easy walk. Soft gnats were bumping around next to our bodies, and her smooth sides were warm. I liked being aloft on her back, rocking up and down, spotting rabbits and approving of them as though I were a prince and owned it all.
41
Later Mrs. Gandy butchered a melon for us, and I watched a hungry Betty eat right down through the flesh and into the white part of the rind, almost to the skin. I don’t know whether that is the Chinese way of eating a melon or only Betty’s way.
Mr. Gandy said he would cook us a fresh chicken. I’d seen their little flock sorting the edges of the manure pile. “The freshly killed farm chicken is not like the store-bought chicken,” Mr. Gandy said.
Betty nodded. “More delicious.”
Gandy liked that. “She knows!” He attempted to clap a large basket down over a brown hen, but the bird kept getting away. He started toward the house for his .22 rifle, but Mrs. Gandy forbade it. Not around the horses.
“We’ll have steaks,” Mr. Gandy said. He set them frozen on a hot grill. Mine was all right. Betty was astonished at the size of the cuts but managed to tuck hers away inside her hollow leg along with half a large baked potato.
We were at the table eating when Betty said, “Please pass the salt, Angela.”
Mr. Gandy laid his silver down. Betty made a great show of studying the cap on the crystal saltshaker. I was beginning to understand her way of operating.
I followed Mr. Gandy into the kitchen.
“I feel silly,” Mr. Gandy said. “You’ve had us calling you Roberta all afternoon.”
“She must have heard Ray use my name.”
He poured himself a scotch and me a ginger ale. As long as I had him alone, I asked him what Headquarters had to say about Betty. He had slipped away for a half hour during the melon-eating, so I assumed he’d been on the phone.
“I’ll let you know when there’s news,” he said. He plunked a straw into my ginger ale, which made me feel eight years old.
After dinner we moved to the living room. The woodwork glowed as though it had been rubbed that very day, and a long muzzle-loader over the fireplace caught Betty’s eye. The poodle crossed the room and laid his head on Mr. Gandy’s leg.
“Hello, Estevan,” Mr. Gandy said. He rubbed the dog behind its ears until it dropped into a heap.
On the wall there was an old painting of three round-headed children with bows around their necks. “The one with curls is my great-grandmother,” Mrs. Gandy said. The artist had work in the National Gallery, she mentioned.
With their great serious eyes and straight mouths the children looked as though they had come back from the dead, though maybe not all the way.
“That portrait is a piece of American history,” Mr. Gandy said.
I guess Mrs. Gandy knew this to be the windup to a story, because she asked Mr. Gandy not to tell it. “Our guests don’t want to hear that awful business,” she said.
He wouldn’t be stopped. The scotch he gripped was his third or fourth, and his face was pink and his voice bright like brass as he told how the children’s parents had been murdered by Indians. “Slaughtered—throats cut! And the children tied in place to see them bleed out. Imagine their lives, having seen such a thing! But no—you can’t imagine a thing like that. It would make you into something altogether different.”
He rested the glass on a shelf made by his stomach and smiled at the poodle, who was watching him. “I see you, old friend,” he said, and he stretched to touch the dog’s head again while Mrs. Gandy from her chair two yards away burned holes in the side of his face. At last he felt the temperature.
“Did I say something wrong? They’ve all been dead for many decades,” he said.
Mrs. Gandy didn’t speak, only glared.
“What is it?” Mr. Gandy said. Then he looked at me, and dismay covered his face.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m awfully stupid.”
Mrs. Gandy said, “My God, Alex.” She got out of her chair and left the room.
42
Their embarrassment was interesting to me. They view me as something fragile, I decided. Something damaged.
“This portrait must have been made before the parents were keyhole,” Betty said. “Most people will not pay to make a portrait of some orphan brother and sister.”
Mr. Gandy was so visibly rattled that his poodle had stood up. “Now, now, Estevan,” Mr. Gandy said. “Sit. Let’s change the subject, ladies.”
“You have a big house,” Betty said. “What is your job?”
“I’m retired from the florin service,” he said.
“Don’t know what that is,” Betty said.
“I meant to say foreign service.”
“Still don’t know. You have work with this girl’s father?”
“What’s on TV?” I said.
“Yes,” Mr. Gandy said. “Her father and I are old colleagues.”
“I am surprise he will let her drive that Scamp. She is too small. I don’t see anybody else who is so small drive a car and go around by herself. I am worry about her maybe. She have said she will help me, but I think, How? She is not an adult.”
“If it were not for me and that Scamp,” I said, “you would have got your hand chopped off.”
“I haven’t heard that part yet,” Mr. Gandy said.
“I’m just talking about a very angry old woman with a knife as big as your shoe,” I said.
“I think maybe this girl’s father has run away,” Betty said.
“Mr. Gandy knows where my father is!”
“Who is Mr. Gandy?” Betty said.
“I mean Mr. Howell!” I said.
“What will you do, Mr. Howell?” Betty said to Mr. Gandy.
“I don’t know what I will do,” he said. “I’m lost.”
Angela Sloan Page 9